30 years ago Aunty cracked open a good fortune cookie, and finally the prophecy is manifest:

The one and only Polly Jean. On the one and only stage.

A boundary-dissolving icon. Rockstar redefined.

Let Golden Shake.

PJ Harvey is a category of one. 

Lurid and petulant on Rid of Me, sleek and melodic on Stories From The City, haunting and histrionic on Let England Shake. Each new record weaving a sonic netherworld, strung together with its own lore – her music a disguise and a guise, building the ever-evolving enigma of the farm girl from Dorset.

Down By The Water. To Bring You My Love. Man-Size. 50ft Queenie. Good Fortune. Angelene.

Decades of music shaped by What Polly Did Next.

And I feel like
Some bird of paradise

Guitar, saxophone, piano, autoharp, violin, harmonica. Two books of poetry. Two Mercury Prizes. It’s all within her grasp.

Of late, PJ continues to unfurl in the hallucinatory dreamworld of 2023’s I Inside The Old Year Dying. 

“I’ve never seen a more powerful presence on stage”

Uh Huh.

PJ Harvey. Sunday night at Golden XVII.

From the Emerald Isle to the Golden Mile.  

The new bards of Old Éire. Possibly the hottest band on the planet.

Fontaines D.C. in 3333.

Televised Mind. A Hero’s Death. Jackie Down The Line. Favourite. Boys In The Better Land. I Love You. Starburster.

Big.

Fontaines have been ON ONE since day dot. Songs that scuttle and shake atop romantic lyrical eviscerations, delivered with the heart-denting cadence of Joyce or McGowan. A near perfect debut slinging them straight into the maelstrom.

Dublin in the rain is mine, a pregnant city with a Catholic mind

Prolific, transient, they keep unfolding with each loop. 

Apparently rock & roll is still for poets. And poets can still change the fucking world. 

“Fontaines write songs like they’ve been locked in a cave after being forced to notice everything there is to know about the world and the human condition”

Romance, their fourth in six, is an eye-wobbling leap into the neon abyss. A rave-y stadium-sized kinda record. Shiny and frayed, Fontaines D.C. have kicked over the sandbox and found a whole new groove. Deep within, far without.

Maybe romance is a place

Sunday night. Eucalyptic. 

The mashup of the year =

2ManyDJs x GP17

Broadcasting live from The Sup’ for the very first time. Radio Soulwax. On demand.

The brothers Dewaele knocked the needle right off course in 2002. Sidestepping Soulwax for a DJ double act, they ushered in the DIY blog-house shuffle-down decade with a debut mix so giddy it got everyone hot under the collar, even Bowie. Peaches x The Velvet Underground x The Stooges x Salt-N-Pepa x Dolly Parton x Röyksopp. They did it like no-one had ever quite done it.

“We enjoy doing unobvious things. The fun part is when you can piss people off.”

And boyyyyyyy did they put on a show.

Still, the Belge touch is on a purple patch longer than the Sunday morning line at Tucker Tent. Sylvester, MGMT, LCD, Marie Davidson, Tame Impala. Pulling songs through time with the unmistakable Soulwax sound. All the while scouring pop’s strangest angles with 24-hour mixes, soundsystem collabs, and their imprint/studio/creative hive, DEEWEE.

Two years ago Rick Wilhite closed Golden with their 20-minute Blue Monday version. At Sweet Sixteen their label signees, Charlotte & Bolis, blew our socks off.  

Now, for Pt.17, we’re primed for a late nite masterclass.

The Flying Dewaele Brothers.

Letsssgooo.

Naarm’s most beloved humanoid deadbeat punks. Led by the beguiling Brenna O, a kinda Siousxe-meets-Liza back alley diva, and her cast of curious miscreants. Cooking up art-punk (or is it punk-art?) in sexy chatrooms and suburban warehouses, they grind it out night-after-night under the blood-shot eye of their brutish manager, Pig. Wet Kiss are a scene. An itch you can’t scratch. But wowee do they put on a rock show – wiping the floor with whatever ratfolk dare share a bill with them. This is gonna get wild.

Pucker up.

The duo du jour, landing their Imaginal Mystery Tour on the Supernatural-est of stages.

Like a cosmic flare caught in a Y2K timewarp, Magdalena Bay’s subliminal pop flies close to the sun. Crystallising via the pure imagination of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin, Mag Bay is a heady musical cult, where more is more and there’s always room to crank up the synth harp.

From prog-rock babes to weavers of hyper-real concept glit-pop, they’ve long rattled around the edges. Bringing a bit of drama kid to the indie world, theirs is a sonic vortex that recalls the familiar, while fishing the future.

Their latest vision? A star-making, candy-coloured dreamworld of a record.

“Imaginal Disk is one of the best pop albums of the last decade.”

Come ready for a costume change.

Osees are a thought. A feeling. A mutant, sprawling, growing, shrinking THING. Like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly or that fungi sprouting spores under your kitchen sink, John Dwyer is forever transmogrifying. He’s done it 28 times now. 

One fact remains static, though: You haven’t lived until you’ve seen the Osees. Or the Oh Sees, The Ohsees, The Oh Sees, Thee Oh Sees, or Oh Sees for that matter. 

Their live shows are unhinged. Pry the door right off the frame and set it alight kinda unhinged. A thousand baby spiders blasting across the universe unhinged. Double-drumming face-melting robo-punk motorik mayhem cosmic-gloop freak folk hypno-psychedelia. Or, in their own words: “Dexy’s Midnight Runners meets Von LMO meets The Flesh Eaters meets The Screamers kinda punk junk.”  

A Supernatural return some 15 years in the making.

OSee you in the pit. BYO Mortein.

A Golden Homecoming Queen.

All rise.

Thelma Plum is still ascending. Over a decade of pop craft and she keeps finding new moves. 

Better In Blak was an instant classic. The kind of debut that arrives rarely and sticks firmly. Hooks so big they could climb mountains (and inspire a Beatle). Wedging open a window to Thelma’s world, the music turned over small rocks to reveal big grooves. Life as a young Galmilaraay woman laid bare.

Clumsy Love. The Brown Snake. Better In Blak. We Don’t Talk About It.

Big big songs, for a big big moment. Like a Saturday Night in The Sup’.

Recently she’s been channelling a little bit of Shania, Stevie and Sheryl into something entirely her own. We can’t hardly wait.

“A captivating power.”

Let’s go girls.

Stacked into a West Belfast boozer. Doors bolted. Rain belting. Noise rising. Guinness flowing. Loos beckon. Eardrums wibbling. Eyes wobbling. The weekend is here. You’ve nothing to lose.

It’s Kneecap’s world. We’re just passing through.

Móglaí Bap, Mo Chara and DJ Provaí are on one. Crusaders. A coupla Gaeligroirs turned cult heroes. Self-described low-life scum. Their mission? Make music. Reclaim language. F–k The Brits. Hug their mams. Hug Elton. Get on it. Get off it. What of it? 

The world’s never quite heard anything like them. Flipping Gaeilge and English into head-rattling bangers, they’ve been banned by radio, stormed Sundance, and starred in their own chem-fuelled biopic. The lines might be blurred, but the story is straight. 

Those in the know get it. Get them. Radie Peat, Annie Mac, Grian Chatten, Jelani Blackman. All on board this fine Fine Art.

Late Nite Saturday. Joint is gonna pop right off.

One for the lovers. Get down for Durand Jones & The Indications.   

Charisma doesn’t grow on trees, it resides permanently inside of Durand Jones. 

Ascending from an Indiana basement to the sticky back rooms of Bloomington, The Indications walked before they could talk. Players’ players, crate-diggers, soul fanatics. They dipped into canon to bring us R & B with bite, their volcanic live show building a rep from east to west.

Seeping from his pores, squeezing through his diaphragm, wriggling free from his protoplasm mid-song, to make it witchoo. Durand’s magnetic bravado matched only by Aaron Frazer’s featherlight falsetto.

Dancing under the disco ball, they arrive for their first ever Aussie shows at the peak of their powers.

Stretch out the hammies. Pop your top button. Hair down. Hands up.

A golden groove for those who reeeeeaaaalllly wanna move.

Dance royalty in the House. A euphoric, Sunday night cherry on top.

The iconic Robin S.

Every so often a song arrives that defies the space time continuum. Strrrrrrrrretching itself across the decades, before landing smack bang back at the centre of it all. 

Show Me Love is that jam.

Whipping across dancefloors in ‘93, the Robin S anthem caught a moment and let rip. Her gutsy gospel vocal and a Korg M1 synthesiser reshaping club music ad infinitum. Kept in the mix by those in the know, by 2015 everything kinda sounded like it all over again. Then Beyonce went and dropped the needle on it.

Shimmy alllll the way to the front. Luv 4 Luv at Golden Plains XVII.

From Peru, via Berlin. One of the most magnetic producers in dance music today, and a name on many notes in Aunty’s suggestion box in recent years.

Golden’s lustre grows with Sofia Kourtesis. 

Her debut album, Madres, is a shimmery collection of emotive house, protest chants, club rhythms, and sunlit synths that testifies to dance music’s spiritual nourishment. Dedicated not only to her mother but also to the neurosurgeon who performed life-saving cancer surgery on her. As a token of her gratitude, Kourtesis named the track Vajkoczy for him, and took him to Berghain.

She’s remixed Polachek and has a new song coming with Caribou. 

In DJ mode, Saturday night. Right after fellow South American savant, Ela Minus. 

Gonna be a Perla.

Two brothers, one trip.

Like violet and blue wavelengths scattering in the dipping sun, Estevan and Alejandro Gutiérrez are just outta sight. Rippling shadows stretched across moon-blasted bitumen. Stardust brushing the edge of Orion’s Belt. Always a fingertip away from being fully captured.

“An immersive interstellar experience.”

These Ecuadorian-Swiss, guitar-slinging hermanos play music drawn from the same blood. Morricone-dappled soundscapes that rumble and swing with the rhythm of a Latin Spaghetti Western set on Mars. They’ve ridden this hallucinogenic energy across six records, the latest with Dan Auerbach steering the mothership. 

Saddle up for an afternoon showdown.

Bahamadia was ahead of her time. A master on the mic, she connected the dots between Philly’s underground and whatever was bubbling up on the coasts. Her ‘96 debut Kollage is a masterpiece of its moment. Beats by DJ Premier and Guru, its laconic swagger is understated in a way little else was in the G-funk era. It might be why she never got her full due. But those that knew, knew. And her marshmallow flow remains an iconic imprint on joints from The Roots, Lauryn Hill, Talib Kweli, MC Lute, Slum Village, Roni Size, Erykah Badu, King Britt. You get the picture. 

“Whatever you are most passionate about is what you are…  I am hip hop.”

Sunday arvo.

Bringing her rumbletown mixture to the Golden Plains fixture. 

That goddamn voice.

Grace Cummings sings like she’s turning the tide. A force so immense it’s flung her from The Tote to the canyons of Cali, recording her latest tour-de-force with the guy that gave Angel her wings and helped Weyes Blood ascend.

If Refuge Cove was Grace finding her pulse, then Ramona is her flying at top speed down the slopes of Alpe d’Huez. A full-bodied commitment few else could handle. With each new record she steps a little further into the wild. Where she ends up is anyone’s guess, but right now the horizon cannot contain her.

“Powerful enough to pound granite into dust.”

Blasting leaves from bluegums, at the crest of Sunday arvo.

Three American folk stars met up a few years ago to rework some old standards. The chemistry was so good that Anaïs Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson and Josh Kaufman have been at it ever since – writing odes to love, loss and hope that burst through like sun on the dew.

This is folk music that invites you into the eye of the storm. Songs with brightly strummed guitars, nimbly picked mandolins and upright pianos that creak in time with pub singalongs. Songs with aching melodies about fresh starts and long-time lovers dripping wet hair on the kitchen floor. Songs for getting the bug spray because the verandah jams aren’t winding down.  

Music for a golden eve in the country air. Saturday.

If your instinct is to dance to soaring techno pop on a Saturday night, then Minus is the addition for you.

A Bogotá-born artist who started out as a jazz drummer, Ela got into building synths, improving hypotonic ambience, and producing textured dance-floor frost from her bedroom – bilingual songs about everyday rebellion, nocturnal squalor, and following your instincts.

Creyeron que no nos íbamos a acordar de volar 

She’s released a dreamy reggaeton-house record with DJ Python, and supported Underworld, Four Tet and Caribou. On her just-announced new album, she’s expanded her sound with an acoustic warmth and arena-sized uplift. 

March up the arpeggios and get lost in the layers.

Golden Plains, are you ready to rooooooock?

Stepping into The Sup’ with amps jammed up to 11. The party-rocking kings of Akaye. 

Mulga Bore Hard Rock.

This young crew of brothers and cousins from outback NT crank out classic rock riffs hotter than the Central Desert. Laying down their head-banging anthems in English and Anmatyerre, Alvin Manfong’s tongue-wagging antics give Gene Simmons a run for his money. In fact, he did just that when the band opened for KISS on their last Aussie tour. Phwoah.

Putting the GLAM in glamping at GPXVII.

Horns up 4 MBHR.

OPA!

Yes indeed, limber up for a big ol’ boogie with Adriana in the Sunday arvo sweet spot.

One of the city’s finest and most down to earth diggers, Adriana brings infectious energy to everything she does, coasting between traditional and contemporary sounds. Since wrapping up her PBS show, Opalakia, this local ledge has put out some hot, hot wax, mixes for Planet Trip and Brilliant Corners, and launched a party named for the Greek plate-smashing tradition. SPASTA has featured not only the communal shattering of ceramics (shouts to the Night Cat cleaners), but flower throwing, live bouzouki players, Pontian dancers, cracked eggs, Greek food and, of course, the finest of selectors. No wonder it’s become an instant classic.

A riot of genres, enthusiasm and curiosity. Unstoppable!

Name a more iconic duo. Teether & Kuya Neil make future-focused rap informed by everything from experimental sound art to modern club styles like footwork, gqom and bass music. Teether’s nonchalant but vivid words infuse Neil’s hyper-modern production. Signed to Chapter for their mixtape GLYPH, they followed it up with STRESSOR, syncs in the new Heartbreak High, and have more dropping soon.

“A powder keg of bangers primed to shake the rat race to its core” 

Two powerful forces in the Naarm/Melbourne underground in their own rights, Teether has a vast solo catalogue, as well as his work with Too Birds and Billy Woods. Kuya Neil is just as prolific, founder of creative collective content.net.au and producing for the likes of Bayang the Bushranger, Papaphilia and Mulalo.

Saturday session.

A DJ so adept at opening wormholes, it’s a trip hazard. You can almost stumble on one now. The blue hue before dawn, hugging the friend you’ve spotted for the first time, party debris crunching underfoot. The closing stretch of a Golden weekend.

The CCL sound has been shaped by a life moving across many scenes: Rome, Bristol, Seattle, Berlin. They glide with astounding flair through infectious steppers, psychedelic techno, supple house, glittering footwork, drum and bass, dub, post-punk, and all that lies beyond and between.

As a DJ, mixtape-maker and producer, they are incisively technical and uncannily creative. Check A Night In The Skull Discotheque, their Honcho Campout Mix, their debut EP, or Ode to the Queer Steppas – named one of the mixes of the decade. 

A master of the Plot Twist, bringing it all home. CCL til’ dawn. 

Lick myself in a sauna, taste the truth, fuck
The real coming home

Skeleten is the project of Sydney’s Russell Fitzgibbon. Steamy, emotive electronica with a blend of trip-hop, new-age, shoegaze and even nu-metal. Affirmations and uncertainty, rendered with equal clarity. Music for the moment.

Following his work with Fishing, the pulsing Skele debut Under Utopia dropped last year. Not hesitating to pour some more water on the rocks, there’s new music already, and it’s Russell’s most assured and exciting yet. Axel Boman hopped on for a remix, and the band is primed for a Supernatural groove.

Deep Scene, Saturday.

Soulful heaters across the sonic spectrum, with Zjoso.

Well versed in party-throwing and dancefloor-stoking, the Tribqu founder is a DJ, designer, curator and Skylabber. His sound spans street soul, dub reggae, 90s house, broken beat, Detroit techno and beyond. West African in heritage, the Naarm-based selector has become an essential thread in the city’s musical tapestry, sharing the stage with the likes of Ron Trent and Marcellus Pittman.

A laaate night treat for the deep groovers and delectable dancers. Sunday.

Catch her on the way up, cause Jada Weazel’s coordinates are set to outer space. 

With a voice that stretches that lush neon cloud between R’N’B and pop, Jada’s been twisting ears all the way from Woorabinda to Murrumbeena. From recording song snippets at home with the fam, to dropping her debut EP, it’s been a wild ride. But she knows exactly where this trip is headed. Send My Love is one of her latest, and it sure is somethin’ else. Hypnotic. Symbiotic. A little supersonic.

Settling into the groove, Sunday.

Drum girl sings, guitar boy screeches. A killer combo when you have it. And Elliot & Vincent have it.

Word on this young two-piece reached Aunty’s caravan some moons ago from a basement show in Tāmaki Makaurau, New Zealand. Formerly known as Vincent & Elliot, they formed on casual invitation for a friends house party, Vincent grabbing his Japanese lawsuit guitar and Elliot her tea-towel covered tom drums. Primal, beating rhythms and sculptural, driving guitar lines, with a ZZ Top cover to boot.

They remind me a little of a young band who played the first Meredith at the ‘new’ site (yes, there was an ‘old’ site, a couple of paddocks over). That was back in 2002, and yeah, yeah, multiple yeahs they were something to behold. 

Crossing the ditch for the first time, on the back of their single Doberman: Elliot & Vincent.

Rock Music Fan Club. Rock Music Fantastic Convulsions. Rock Music Final Comment. Rock Music Freak Club. Rock Music Football Club.

Whatever it stands for, R.M.F.C. is the brainchild of Buz Clatworthy, from the coastal town of Ulladulla, NSW. Buz started the project in 2018 when he released his first cassette, Hive, Vol. 1, in September 2018, made by Buz playing all the instruments in his bedroom. He soon put a band together and, after some more EPs & singles, they unleashed a ripping LP in Club Hits. One of the finest discs of Rock Music in recent times – with a live show to match the buzz.

Raring to go. Sunday.

The Lizard of Oz.

Beaming down from Planet X’trapolis, it’s the Master of the Acidic and Champion of the Lacertilia, Reptant. The local producer, human name Lucas J. Hatzisavas, uses drum machines and synthesisers to make exquisite electro. His sound layers complex drum grooves, future-funk baselines, and sci-fi squelches, building worlds of Lizard lore and seeing releases on labels from Kalahari Oyster Cult to his own LKR Records. 

Reptant Live, closing Saturday night.

GPXVII: March Of The Repazoids.

Acopia usher you into a hazy dreamworld. Sultry vocals, pensive synthesis, and smouldering basslines. Breathy whispers on the winds of trip-hop, shoegaze, dream pop, and downtempo. 

Kate Durman, Lachlan McGeehan and Morgan Wright comprise the Naarm-based trio. Two albums in, they have honed their intimate charm and slow burn anthems, letting them glimmer and grow. Catching ears from local imprint Companion, to Palms Trax’s CWPT, and sporting remixes from JD Twitch and Daniel Avery. 

Sink in, Sunday morning.

History of a different kind – straight from the heart, spoken with verve. 

Uncle Barry draws to the surface the hidden natures of ourselves and the land, and the past’s continuing hold on the present.

The next instalment in the Book of Barry. Late morning, Sunday.

Sometime in 1936 or ‘37 an Alabama-born college student named Herman Poole Blount was transported to Saturn.

The aliens that beamed him there had small antennas on their ears and eyes. They told him he would speak to the world through music. And that the world would listen. 

They were right.

From then on Herman became Sun Ra.

Over his lifetime he was one of the most radical, original and prolific musicians to ever do it.

A composer, band leader, swing legend, interstellar poet, synth and fusion innovator, improv icon, free jazz instigator, be-bopper, avant-gardist, Afrofuturist, original cyberpunk, and extraterrestrial. 

Sun Ra returned to the cosmos in 1993, but his band never stopped hoisting his freak flag.

That’s because his Arkestra is less of a band and more of a communication device. A ragtag collective of original sidemen and true believers. Each performance connects to a receiver on Saturn – tethers itself to Sun Ra’s peace-loving energy – and sends that energy through us, back into the world.

It’s highly suggested that you get your ass down there. 

What are you gonna do without your ass?